The forces that shape gun culture

July 28, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The forces that shape gun culture

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether the AR-15 can be banned, and the outcome may turn on a surprisingly arcane question: Is the rifle in "common use"? That test, created by the Court itself in its 2008 Heller decision, holds that if a gun is popular enough, it's protected by the Second Amendment and cannot be outlawed. As New York Times investigative reporter Mike McIntyre explains in his new book Ricochet: Guns, Greed, and the American Way of Violence, this logic creates a strange circular problem. As one federal appeals court noted, if the 1934 law restricting fully automatic machine guns had never passed, "a lot of gun enthusiasts would love to have a machine gun, and they probably would be in common use today, and therefore they would be considered protected." In other words, constitutionality winks on and off depending on marketing success. McIntyre, who has covered gun violence for four decades and been part of three Pulitzer Prize-winning teams, argues that this modern legal framework has little basis in the original Second Amendment—and that the story of how we got here involves a deliberate, decades-long campaign to reframe what the amendment means.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:14) **Introduction: The Puzzle of America's Gun Culture** - Host Terry Gross introduces the episode's central question: how did we get mass shootings nearly every day while guns get easier to buy?
2 (01:47) **The AR-15 Case Before the Supreme Court** - McIntyre explains the upcoming Supreme Court case that will determine the legality of AR-15 bans based on the "common use" test.
3 (09:21) **The Second Amendment's Original Controversy** - McIntyre reveals that the Second Amendment was controversial among the founders themselves, who focused on the militia, not individual self-defense.
4 (13:21) **John Dingell Jr.: The Congressman Who Reshaped the NRA** - McIntyre details how Democratic Congressman John Dingell Jr. used his position on the NRA board to transform the organization into a gun rights juggernaut.
5 (22:40) **Harlan Carter: The NRA's Secret Past** - McIntyre reveals the hidden manslaughter conviction of Harlan Carter, the NRA's new executive director and chief lobbyist.
6 (26:34) **Cultivating Children: The NRA's School Strategy** - McIntyre describes NRA documents showing a deliberate effort to get shooting programs into public schools by "slipping it in" through state education departments.
7 (29:08) **Guns and Video Games: Marketing Violence** - McIntyre explains how the gun industry markets weapons through violent video games, targeting troubled young men.

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Show Notes

Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘New York Times’ reporter Mike McIntire says gun companies and the NRA are broadening the scope of the Second Amendment, socializing kids to appreciate guns and marketing a new brand of masculinity. McIntire spoke with Terry Gross about his book, ‘Ricochet: Guns, Greed, and the American Way of Violence.’

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